Visionary biochemist Jennifer Doudna shared the Nobel Prize last year for the gene-editing technology known as CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats), which has the potential to cure diseases caused by genetic mutations. Correspondent David Pogue talks with Doudna about the promises and perils of CRISPR; and with Walter Isaacson, author of the new book "The Code Breaker," about why the biotech revolution will dwarf the digital revolution in importance.
Scientist makes COVID discovery in lab. (Photo Adobe Stock)
Since my colleagues and I first described CRISPR as a genome-engineering tool in 2012, the technique has transformed fundamental research. More than 15,000 papers containing the term have been published, hundreds of different organisms have been edited and this...
Katia Gibson, (B.S. '21, Chem) surfing last August at Jalama Beach in Santa Barbara County, brought along two surfboards, to get practice time on each. (Photo by Steve Gibson)
The COVID-19 pandemic has separated us, but sharing stories about how members of the campus community have been surviving — and even thriving — since...
Jennifer Doudna talks with Alex Ehrenberg, a graduate student in integrative biology who is helping organize the FAST trial of saliva tests for COVID-19. Photo: UC Berkeley/Irene Yi
Researchers have used CRISPR gene-editing technology to come...
A new program called BeArS@home will customize interactive lab experiments that have historically been available only in the classroom for online learning by College of Chemistry undergraduate students this fall. When the COVID-19 pandemic kept students away from campus this spring, Berkeley’s Department of Chemistry had to scramble to keep the laboratory sections working. Now they are getting serious and building the real thing.
As the number of COVID-19 cases continue to escalate in the United States, healthcare providers across the country are dealing with a shortage of personal protective equipment, which has left many workers on the frontlines vulnerable to catching and transmitting the virus. In the Bay Area, an initiative called Shield the Bay is aiming to address this PPE crunch.
by Martin Mulvihill (Ph.D. '09, Chem) | Safer Made
With cleaning and sanitizing products flying off the shelves and handwashing jingles becoming ubiquitous, we'd like to consider the chemistry of micro-organism control. There are many ways to effectively remove pathogens, including coronavirus, from surfaces. Most of these products use one of three basic mechanisms to chemically control bacteria and viruses.
BERKELEY, Calif. (KGO) -- A single image helped alert the world to a once-in-a-lifetime side effect of the COVID-19 crisis. It was a satellite map, showing a dramatic drop in pollution levels over China after the country began to effectively quarantine its population. Shortly afterward Ron Cohen, Professor of Chemistry and of Earth and Planetary Sciences at UC Berkeley, predicted a similar effect here in the Bay Area.
UC Berkeley and UCSF Professor Kevan Shokat, along with members of his lab, have joined with other scientists around the world in a unique research project under the auspices of the Quantitative Biosciences Institute Coronavirus Research Group (QBI) spearheaded by UCSF Professor Nevan Krogan. The international team is testing an unusual new approach to identify potential antiviral drugs with proven efficacy to treat SARS-Cov-2 infections. Given the world crisis, the strategy of testing known/approved drugs could help reduce the numbers of deaths in the near term while the world health community battles the epidemic.
